Public meetings in Michigan, California and New York

Google: The new face of Internet censorship

24 October 2017

Google is censoring the Internet. The World Socialist Web Site has extensively documented the efforts of the search giant to manipulate search results to restrict or block access to socialist and left-wing websites, including the WSWS, Alternet, Wikileaks, Counterpunch, Truthout, Common Dreams, and many others. Under the guise of combating “fake news,” Google is collaborating with the US government and the Democratic Party to limit access to oppositional views.

Google’s censorship is part of broader moves by the ruling class to suppress free speech. In the media, one report of alleged Russian intervention in US politics follows the next, each more ludicrous than the last. While one aim has been to continue and escalate an anti-Russia foreign policy, the more basic purpose is emerging ever more clearly: to criminalize political dissent.

The destruction of democratic rights is the political response of the corporate and financial aristocracy to the growth of working class discontent bound up with record levels of social inequality. It is intimately linked to preparations for a major escalation of imperialist violence around the world.

These meetings, called by the Socialist Equality Party, International Youth and Students for Social Equality and the WSWS will present the facts about Google’s attack on left-wing websites and lay out a plan for fighting censorship.